RELIGION WHEN REFUTED BY SCIENCE ATTACKS IT AS HARMFUL

Religion says: If religion has done evil and harm, science is in no position to condemn.  It has done evil too.  Unlike science, religion will not destroy the world in a nuclear blast.

Answer: If religion is really as loving of science as it says, what would happen if it took it over to do it?  It would censor what it does not what people to know and it would still work out how to make nuclear weapons.  Unlike non-believers, it will see using the weapons to destroy the world as something God is still in control over so it might not be really the end for humanity.

Science is a discipline - it is not the people.  Thus science cannot be blamed for the nuclear weapons etc that have been developed.  Religions wage war over which religion is right and no scientist has declared war yet for science.  If science makes a nuclear bomb, you can't blame science if a religion decides to detonate the bomb!

Religion says: We have faith in the supernatural and it gives us the sense of transcendence.  Faith in God is based on our joyful trust in God and in those who he has sent to preach the gospel to us.  Faith is good in theory and in practice. We are happy not to check all things out.  Faith is not a necessary evil but a blessing and a gift and a virtue.  Even the most rigid scientist has some kind of faith.

Religion likes to say that science is a kind of secular faith.  The ambition is to deter people from accepting the popular view that faith is bad and science is not faith so it is good.

In science taking the word of a scientist that something is the case is not something to be celebrated. It is a necessary evil at best but only when you really cannot check it out. If this is faith it is not faith in the sense of being joyful trust.

Faith is never good in theory and it is only tolerable in practice. You must believe in theory that if you could check it all out yourself you would.

DIFFERENT QUESTIONS?

We are told, "Science asks how?"   Religion says science does not ask why. But if that is true then science assumes there is no need to ask why. Religion says that God is the why and God comes first. So it says there is a need to ask why.

Religion says the why is answered as follows, "God who is love made all things and a rebellion took place causing evil. Evil is not his fault but down to the rebellious. His plan is to see as much love as possible emerge and to make it last forever. Nobody can test if God is acting and nobody can test love and therefore these things are beyond the capability of science."

But science can see if things are really improving.

And science sees love as a chemical reaction and as testable.

And science argues that one day all things will be destroyed.

It is not true that the why is not a question for science. It is. If you try to put certain things beyond scientific examination then the end result is not science but prejudice and half-truth.

Science seeks the theory of everything which is meant to answer why and explain why there is something rather than nothing.  We already have most of the pieces of the theory though there is much more to do.

The science is about how and the religion is about why argument is really an attempt to make out that religion can never be refuted by science. Con-artists who want to save their lies from the risk of refutation, must tell religious or supernatural ones.

The argument actually makes any particular religion unconvincing. If science has never anything to say to religion then religion has never anything to say to science. Putting science and religion in two totally separate realms means one can never contradict or undermine the other.

So if Hinduism is as outside of science as Christianity then you may as well choose one or the other for there is no way of knowing what the best or most pro-science choice is.  And if one is convinced by one's religion and thinks science has nothing to say to the faith then one is not giving science the importance it demands and deserves.

Science can only say something is inexplicable or unexplained and never calls anything a miracle for there is no scientific test to show that God really did a miracle. If a miracle happens you don't know if God did it.  So if religion really believes that science is about the how, then why does it bring in scientists when there is a report of a miracle or healing? 

Religion says there is no how without God. So it makes out that the how is inseparable from who and why. Science ignores this. Science and religion then are in conflict and religion is the cause of the conflict.

Also science sees no need for a who when it asks how.  It is clear that there has to be a who if nothing happens without a God who is personal doing it.

It is nonsense to say that religion by default does not say how we came to be. Some religions do and some don't. The Bible says that all mankind came from Adam and Eve and that Adam was made from dust and Eve was made from his rib. To say this story doesn't ring true is to read our modern ideas and our better knowledge back into primitive texts. It is to distort them.

Religion asks how, why and by whom - meaning God.

We are told "Science asks how things work while religion deals with another issue, who made all things and why.  Thus science and religion do not conflict for they are about separate things." 

Science interprets reality as something that has no evident purpose.  Assuming there is a purpose will damage the objectivity needed in the experiments and in scientific reasoning.  Even a vague idea of purpose is a problem.  For example, if science believes that one day many people will be happy forever, it cannot warn against the big crunch - when everything is destroyed.  And it does warn!  Science could ask, "Why is there life now when one day there will be none but only destruction?"

Science says the answer to why something when there could have been nothing is that there was a cause. It does not say there was a purpose and rejects the very notion.

Religion interprets reality as something that has a purpose and that purpose is revealed to us by God.  The purpose is broadly speaking about God's plan for us to be holy in this world and blessed in the next.  All that happens is part of God's big design. We refer to this kind of thinking as teleological. The bee cannot exist without honey. In science, this does not mean that something planned for honey to exist so that the bee might exist. It only means something caused this. Something can be caused without being arranged by design. In science, you see causation at work not design.

Science assumes reason is true.  Science is not possible unless the laws of correct logic and mathematics are considered to be valid.  It follows that even if science does not concern itself about whether or not God exists, it does in the sense that it implicitly rejects belief God if it is irrational.  If reason refutes God then God is against the methodology of science.  It is against reason.  Everything that is discovered has countless implications or possible implications.  Science cannot explore them all.  It makes the discoveries and may look at a few important implications.  If science does not focus on the non-existence of God as in saying, "There definitely or probably is no God" that does not really matter.  Ignoring God amounts to saying there is probably no God.  And if science will not say it does not matter as long as it implies there is no God.  Not saying it does not mean it does not imply there is no God.

Religion answers that "Belief in God is eminently reasonable.  The reasonableness or otherwise of belief in God is not science's concern."  Says who?  Science or religion or both?  If God is activity then he could be science's concern even if he is not.  The could be is important. 

Religion condemns science for doing its job.  It tries to provoke hate against science if it starts to feel threatened.